US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2496

On July 11 2020 05:55 ChristianS wrote:
I don’t generally like to just drop a tweet thread in here, but this one is talking about an issue I was discussing a little while back with current online discourse. And it might be relevant to the current dustup with Danglars?

https://twitter.com/millicentsomer/status/1281414272984027137?s=21

In this case, I think Erasme was reacting less to Danglars specifically and more to the (often cynical) use of the “rising cases, falling deaths” analysis in right-wing discourse (The Atlantic has a decent analysis of that phenomenon here). I’d consider plenty of that analysis worthy of mockery and scorn of the type Erasme gave (Dennis Prager’s “lockdown may be the greatest mistake in human history” comes to mind), but Danglars didn’t say any of that. Maybe he thinks it and is holding his tongue, but if we assume the shittiest possible version of other posters’ intents and arguments is true, the discussion won’t be very good.

I still disagree with Danglars’ post that Erasme was responding to (for reasons mostly enumerated in that Atlantic article), but I think Danglars wound up kind of unfairly serving as a proxy for Erasme’s frustration with a lot of cynical right-wing arguments in general.

On July 11 2020 08:58 JimmiC wrote:

The difference is timing. New York has switched up their approach, at first you are correct they were horrible and they paid an immense price. Now your hearing about a bunch of states that didn't learn from New York and are doing the exact same things of letting it get out of control and then putting in measures. It is just dumber because they had the New York example and we now know so much more about how to deal with it. And you are right that it is going bad in California and it run by a Dem. But from what I have seen he has not been actively spreading false information.

Trump gets the most attention because he is the president, and he wants all the attention. And in this case he is spreading dangerous lies about the pandemic that others are following.

It is great news if he finally wears a mask, hopefully he will also tell others too and stop some of the insanity of having the sitting president spreading lies about how the pandemic spreads, what people should do, and proper treatment. It is absolutely insane that it is happening and this is why it gets talked about.

On July 11 2020 08:37 Wombat_NI wrote:
84% of Americans are wearing a mask?

That sounds like bollocks based on what’s been anecdotally reported here and in the Corona thread

I’d estimate it’s 5% tops over here

On July 11 2020 09:04 GreenHorizons wrote:
With reports of Trump calling Roger Stone to say he is commuting his sentence and Michael Cohen put back in prison, the only person in prison for the whole Russia Gate/Mueller investigation debacle is the guy who blew the whistle.

On July 11 2020 04:08 Biff The Understudy wrote:
There is a great piece in 538 about confederate statues and how they were never meant to preserve history. With their usual extensive data, they show that they have been erected as a symbol of white supremacy in eras where the civil rights of black folks were under attack, by people such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a slavery-nostalgic, KKK praiser, racist group.

Here it is:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/confederate-statues/

On July 11 2020 08:47 Wegandi wrote:


To me, I find it weirdly odd how blame is levied with regards to COVID. Yeah, Trump is a dipshit, but in the US response is generally state-level (this is good, by the way), and the worst state with regards to C19 is NY and specifically with Cuomo's and NYC's response telling people to congregate, go to bars and restaurants, and forcing C19 positive elderly into SNF's with non-infected resulting in thousands of deaths. Yet, you don't really hear much about this, or that CA is in the same position as TX and FL. For better or worse you can't blame Trump for Cuomo's negligence and ineptness, DeSantis' decisions in FL, or Newsom's in CA. You can levy all the criticisms with his bullshit about masks and simplistic rhetoric with testing, but it seems to me that the people who only shout Trump just don't understand our federated system.

By the way the Atlantic article is good. I pointed out a lot of the same things a while ago and I'm still in the wait and see part about the deaths. By the way, it was the CDC in the beginning who told people to not wear masks lol (and who botched test kits, etc.) and the FDA regulatory bodies made early testing extremely prohibitive/banned in many aspects. My general point here is that Government in general is inept and incompetent, not just Trump. For those who look to Government to cure all ills it's a hard pillow to swallow.

On July 11 2020 09:07 Wegandi wrote:
Sure, and I said that's a valid criticism, but a lot of people are solely blaming Trump for US C19 outcome, when in reality he has little influence. Yes, he says dumb shit, yes some small minority of people listen to his dumb shit, but the majority response is at the state level. States like NY, CA, AZ, TX, FL, IL, MA are some of the worst, and guess what it's pretty even when it comes to who is in charge. As you see in this thread some point just want to point at Trump and Republicans, but thats not the truth of the matter, and if there is anything I hate and I will always point out its hypocrisy and blind partisanry. Since TL skews heavily progressive and democratic I tend to point out one side more than the other, but ask Danglar's I'm an equal opportunist when given the chance.

https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases

Just like it was dumb for GOP to say Trump was responsible for the economy, it's stupid to say Trump is wholly responsible for US C19 outcome. We live in a federated republic, not a dictatorship where you just blame or praise the President for everything.

On July 11 2020 09:34 JimmiC wrote:
@danglars that 1000th concern troll post where you strawman peoples points then ask for pity finally worked. We all feel ultra bad for you and realize that you have been the voice of reason. Why should you consider not voting for Trump when he is causing 1000's of deaths, that you mention that he could have handled it better is totally an appropriate response.

On July 11 2020 09:25 Nevuk wrote:
Most people say reconstruction ended in 1877 with the Great Compromise, even in the south. Never heard of it as ending in 1895, and I grew up semi in the south on a border state(my middle name is after Lee... my grandmother's family was very southern).

1895-1905 was around when black people were totally disenfranchised, though.

On July 11 2020 07:30 Danglars wrote:

Probably the best defense I can hope for around these parts.

I honestly think hospitalizations should be discussed in terms of hospitals dealing with capacity concerns and what should be done in the case of hospital beds meeting demands. The "flatten the curve" dialogue was not about preventing the spread, but lowering the rate so hospitals are not overwhelmed. I think that's an important dialogue in the case of phased reopening. But people bringing right-wing baggage with them into that discussion to do some kind of group responsibility dialogue hurt the debate. And I know people that have something huge happen in their life, and suddenly they're extreme and extremely vocal on an issue, just looking for a fight, so I want to express some humility here. I don't know what's going on, and his ideas may evolve on this topic through this or through an actual in-person conversation with something that disagrees with him.

I'll transition from Erasme for a moment, because what that individual said and people that thought it was fine centers around real people and not ideas (and can be mistaken for attacks on the person, and not their current orientation on ideas). The steps that governors and public health professionals take that hurt their message and show caprice in their orders simply empower people that don't want to wear masks or want to have a few friends over for 4th of July. If the ideological vantage point is "these people are one step removed from covid-denying hoaxers, supporting a President that hasn't managed the crisis well, thus sharing group responsibility for some of the deaths" then the societal response is increased disobedience. It's the old photo op of unmasked governor marching with thousands packed into a street to protest police brutality, then telling people that churches can't reopen for fear of spreading covid. I'm still sitting at home twiddling my thumbs with my roommate, but I have very little condemnation for friends that have a barbecue with their friends to "protest injustice and say that Black Lives Matter." Their own elected leaders have shown they play favorites, that COVID isn't a good reason to delay mass protests if the cause is very important, so that is their protest of double standards. I think that kind of dialogue is too easily dismissed in the debates I've been hearing. But I did already write a megapost on that topic, so I'll leave it there.

On July 11 2020 09:52 ChristianS wrote:

Yeah, we and others have gone back and forth on a lot of that before. I’ll resist the urge to dive into one of those disputes again (I was pretty sure you were mad at me after our last back-and-forth and still might be), but I will say that I understand why Erasme or Sim or Jimmi would have pretty thin patience for right-wing arguments attempting to diminish the magnitude of the pandemic and/or promote the merits of relaxing our countermeasures. From the start of this thing it’s been “almost contained” and “no worse than the flu” and “with suicides the economic damage of shutdown might be just as lethal” and “now that we have HCQ we don’t need to shut down” and the like. It’s hard to see anything other than panicked Trump supporters casting about for any defense or deflection they can grab.

I should say I think that’s understandable. In the same way the pandemic has been a really hard time to be a libertarian,

On July 11 2020 08:51 IgnE wrote:


Twitter is a toxic cesspool. Not like the oasis here at TL.